


saudade

by constellatory



Category: Persona 4
Genre: Gen, Longing, M/M, One-Sided Attraction, it's a november fic, repressed feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-01
Updated: 2016-04-01
Packaged: 2018-05-30 12:15:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6423553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/constellatory/pseuds/constellatory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Saudade: A vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist.</p><p>Yu visits Nanako in the hospital, while Yosuke comes along to be supportive. There's a draw, an impossible magnetism to Yu's best friend, and more than anything, he can't let himself be pulled in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	saudade

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gentyjack](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gentyjack/gifts).



It’s always quiet in the hospital at this time of day. Yu prefers to come in the evenings; it only gives him about an hour or so before visiting hours end, but the whole hospital is starting to wind down at this time of day. There’s less bustle and hustle, and the sun is already settling into gloaming outside, its last fading rays seeping in through small, high-set hallway windows. With fewer people, the experience feels somehow more intimate, more private, less invasive. More like a _visit,_ and less like a moment of rushed, pointless contact.

She’s been sleeping, a lot.

The more that time has gone on, the more the fog has thickened, the worse she’s seemed to get. Yu keeps his hopes up, not just for the team, but for her. Secretly, underneath his skin, he worries. He worries that she isn’t seeming to get better, worries that the doctors can’t seem to find a cause for her “mysterious illness,” worries that Dojima is taking so long to recover, too, mostly because he can’t stop pushing himself out of bed for her sake. No matter how hard he pushes himself to have faith, everything seems to keep slipping, bit by bit, inch by inch, silk-fine strands between his fingers, and—

“Partner?”

Yu’s head snaps up, and he realizes all at once that he’s been standing at the door to Nanako’s hospital room without entering it for a few moments too long. Yosuke’s looking at him with careful concern, his expression far more composed than it ever normally is, and Yu feels a stab of guilt. He hadn’t asked Yosuke to come with him, today. His best friend had simply offered, and Yu hadn’t known how to refuse. Mostly, he hadn’t really wanted to. More than anyone else on the team, Yosuke had always seemed to have a knack for reading him, one way or another. Sometimes it bordered on a little unsettling, if only because Yu was unused to being read. People didn’t read him. It was just the other way around, always. And he didn’t mind it that way. To Yu, hearts were gardens, and he moved among and through them with exacting tenderness, nurturing them as best he could, offering the words and comfort and warmth he thought would best help them reach for the sunlight they sought.

But Yosuke — Yosuke told him he had nice hands, and complimented his taste in fashion, and slung an arm around his shoulders, and then seemed to _notice_ that he had trouble keeping his fingers still when he was distracted or troubled or both. That the set of his shoulders would change according to the direction of his thoughts. Yosuke, bright, barking Yosuke, fizzy effervescence like a TaP soda with a smile like the serrated edge of a knife, seemed to _sense_ rather than _see_ the way he’d draw into himself just a bit more when he was stressed. How his own easy smiles and manner would tense up oh so slightly into a quieter stoicism when he felt there was a difficulty he needed to cope with, and the world around him needed a strong face.

Yu hadn’t realized these things about himself until he’d noticed Yosuke noticing them about him.

Yosuke doesn’t see his heart as a garden. Yosuke may not realize it’s Yu’s heart he’s seeing at all. Yosuke, Yu thinks, just sees his buddy and his partner and goes, _I gotta do the best I can by that guy._ But it is Yu’s heart that Yosuke sees. The very deepest and most vulnerable core of it, that no one else gets to glimpse. If their friendship weren’t so natural, such a given, Yu would feel almost paralyzed by how exposed to the air Yosuke makes him feel half the time.

“Sorry,” Yu manages after a moment, letting the shape of his eyes say what his mouth will not. Yosuke seems to understand, just as Yu knew he would, and lifts a hand to gives Yu’s shoulder a squeeze. Yu ignores the way that solid grip sends warmth buzzing through the hollows of his chest, filling up the spaces between each of his ribs with something he doesn’t want to put a name to. Instead he simply nods, and both boys step into the room.

They stay for about forty-five minutes or so. Nanako’s asleep for most of it, and during the short time she’s awake, Yu holds her hand and tells her a story about a cat he met on the way home from school that day. A sweet stray tabby he decided to name Kohi-san because of the deep warm brown of his fur. The story got Nanako to laugh — even Yosuke cracked a smile — and all too soon, their time was up.

“I’ll be back tomorrow, Nanako,” Yu murmurs, standing and smoothing a hand over her forehead, brushing her hair back. She nods against his fingers, lifting her hand to lightly touch his wrist.

“Uh huh. It’s a promise, big bro.” Her pinkie finger curls through his, and though he’s certain the smile on his face is full only of warmth and love, Yosuke must have some idea of the crushing of his heart, because his friend shifts behind him. Yu feels a brush, a touch to his uniform jacket, but it’s so light he can’t place quite where. How did Yosuke even know? What gave him away?

Or does Yosuke just know him that well, to know that when this little girl takes his hand so gently like that, she takes his heart, too, and squeezes it till it bursts, little though she knows it?

“Get some rest.” Carefully placing her arm back on the bed, Yu disentangles their hands and steps away, pulling in a silent breath as he forces himself out of the room, mentally pacing himself so his steps are even and steady and normal. So that if she’s watching his back, it will seem as broad and strong as ever. She needs that, from him. Yosuke tells her good night, too, says something sweet that Yu wishes he paid more attention to, and as they leave the room together, Yu turns to ask him just what it was he said—

—but then he finds that sometimes strangely canny gaze trained on his, and all his words dry up.

Every so often, Yu tries to think back to exactly when he started to feel this way. Maybe during some battle in the TV World, one of many, when Yosuke saved his life? That would have been a good enough reason. Maybe one of the many times when Yosuke slung an arm around his shoulders — that would have, certainly, been a good catalyst for setting off feelings like these, that warmth and too-comfortable closeness. It was definitely before their moment up on the hill, when Yosuke called him _special_ and Yu forgot what breathing meant. It was definitely before he held Yosuke in his arms, and he tilted his head back to stare at the sky and wondered at the feeling of warm tears soaking his shoulder. Was it when Yosuke walked into his room and winked in that disarming, rakish way of his, asking about the goods under his futon? Was it when they both went into the TV together for the first time, with a purpose, only to discover all of Yosuke’s worst darkness?

If he’s honest with himself, though, Yu knows exactly when he fell in love with Yosuke. The day he watched a bike crash, and a pair of legs flailing around... it was one of the most ridiculous things he ever saw, and trying not to laugh as he pulled the other boy free was much harder than he’d made it seem at the time. But the way Yosuke had smiled at him in thanks had made his heart try to stop short, a surprisingly uncomfortable feeling. A seed had been planted then, something he’d not known, but over time it had bloomed in his chest like thick ivy, beautiful and vibrant yet strangling in its density. Sometimes he can't breathe around it, his breath gummed up in his lungs, and he gets choked and wordless because he won’t learn enough floriography to read the veins on the leaves threading his throat.

Maybe he just doesn’t want to know.

As Yu stands there and gazes down at Yosuke and tries to breathe against the fluttering desire in the back of his mouth, he starts to reach out—

—and gives Yosuke a nudge, tilting his head and resuming their walk down the hallway.

“If you’d like to stop by for a while, I’ll make us both dinner before you head home.”

“Really? Aw man, yes! That sounds great, partner! I’m so in.”

As Yosuke’s cloudless laugh lights the air around them, Yu wraps careful bindings around the aching in his chest and locks it all up with a careful key.

 _This is enough,_ he thinks, looking into the warm brown eyes of his best friend. _This is enough._

**Author's Note:**

> For my kohai Gent for her birthday! Happy birthday, Gent. Sorry this is a bit late. 
> 
> Told you I'd post two fics today. Kohi, by the way, means coffee. Anyway, as always, feel free to come say hello to me on [Tumblr](http://thievishly.tumblr.com/).


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